The Space Between
Story The empty space between the two seemed to have the consistency of stone. They could feel the solidity of the air between them wherever they would go. When they had lunch together, in the distance between her sofa and his armchair, between his desk and hers. Even at night, they would only enter their bed through opposite sides. Aaliyah could feel on her skin the icy touch of the mass that separated them. Their voices entered through it, but they arrived distorted and empty. They became like the sound of voices of long lost friends in distant memories, but so distant that they became unrecognisable and like figments of imagination. Aaliyah always answered gently, but she could never remember what they actually said. Her friends recommended her to join a majmoa. They warned her about the solitude of monogamy, but she did not feel like opening her heart to a multitude, and neither did he. Perhaps what was wrong with them could not be fixed by sharing it. She was waiting. Routine would drag out each little task and make distant the memories of the past. It was only when a colony ship arrived at their planet did she realise that ten whole years had gone by - and that she didn’t know what she had been waiting for. It certainly wasn’t that ship, but she decided to get on it anyway. He cried, for two reasons: to make her feel something about leaving him, and to remind her that there was once something between them that had been worth it. They didn’t blame anything on the other. It would have been easier if she could hate him, but he didn’t deserve to be hated. Already on the ship, Aaliyah read the pamphlet again. It promised a new beginning. But she wasn’t so sure. Aaliyah saw the wormhole through the monitor. She felt as though the same pressure that crushed the dust specks that came to realise the whole of the Universe now took hold of her own heart. The promise of an unexplored wormhole exit could take her to a place so far away that it was possible that the light of her native star had not yet reached it. The man that was sitting next to her encouraged her: they were going to make history. Perhaps they would discover worlds where other creatures shared their vision of life. Or maybe planets where the soil was so fertile that there was no need to cultivate. Aaliyah smiled at the enthusiasm of the stranger who shared her enthusiasm. But in an instant, the wormhole swallowed them whole. Their ship never made it back, and the ship sent after them never returned either. It was determined that the wormhole’s exit was unsafe and any rescue was abandoned. A committee determined that it probably exited too close to a sun, but in reality, they had no idea. Halim never married again. He lived the rest of his life in the house he had shared with her. And at times, he could still feel the space between the two. Source Material This short story originally appeared in Rulebook v1.0. Category:Short Stories Category:NPCs Category:Story Seed